Isolation of Neuromelanin Granules

Neuromelanin granules are pigmented organelles in the human midbrain that give name to a brain area, substantia nigra pars compacta, which macroscopically appears as a dark brown region in the midbrain due to the insoluble pigment neuromelanin. The substantia nigra pars compacta massively degenerates in Parkinson's disease and gives rise to severely disabling movement symptoms. It has been suggested that neuromelanin granules play an important role in the neurodegenerative events in Parkinson's disease: redox-active iron is bound to neuromelanin and thereby retained within this compartment, but in Parkinson's disease it is thought to be increasingly released into the cytosol, promoting oxidative stress. This unit includes a methodological workflow for the isolation of neuromelanin granules from the human midbrain. This top-down approach (describes an approach that reduces the complexity of the sample stepwise from the level of tissue to cell, and from cell to organelle) encompasses the organelle isolation by sequential density gradient centrifugation and the assessment of the isolation efficacy by western blotting.